>Playing the new Drive By Truckers album *Dirty South* now. It sounds even more tired than their last one; they've totally given up on trying to be Skynyrd, which sucks. Not horrible, though. Better than Patterson Hood's solo CD, I guess. So I bet it gets very good reviews.<

I'm now convinced, by the way, that *Dirty South* is their worst album ever, by far. The first song rocks okay, but just about everything else drags drags drags, almost 100 percent ballads, damn near no fucking memorable melodies, no fucking energy, nothing. Track #4 is okay, probably some others here and there, I forget which ones. Sometimes the high singing is kinda pretty, and the thing definitely is better to play at work than in a car, since the record does not move AT ALL. "Carl Perkins' Cadillac" strikes me as pandering bullshit. Track #9, "Cottonseed," is one of the most tedious, interminable songs I've heard all year. If somebody really believes I'm missing something, I wish they would explain what it is. Their three EARLY albums (as in pre Southern Rock Opera) blow this one out of the water, if anybody's curious.

Who exactly is "Carl Perkins' Cadillac" pandering to? I mean, any more than Big and Rich are pandering, which you've gotta admit they totally are in places (ie. that whole race thing never made sense to me blahblah bullshit), even though I do still really like the CD.

Now, I haven't heard the Dirty South yet so I guess I can't sufficiently respond, but what I'd heard live sounded terrific.

Mr. Deeds 100% OTM about "Daddy's Cup" - blew me away live, and honestly unless they TOTALLY changed the demo version on the website and the way they play it live for the record, I'm really surprised Chuck wouldn't like "Carl Perkins" 'cause it's got such a GREAT poppy riff on it, one of the catchiest I've heard all year.

"Where the Devil Don't Stay" was a great rocker live as well, and "Danko/Manuel" was a terrific ballad to these ears. I will admit that Patterson's songs did sound kind of weak in comparison to Cooley and Isbell, and of course again I haven't actually heard the album so I might be totally off base altogether.

yeah and Roger OTM about "Cassie's Brother" vs. All Of Decoration Day - I mean, c'mon, next to "Outfit" and "Sink Hole" and "Marry Me" and the title track, "Cassie's Brother" is a dud.

I will say however that I agree with Chuck about missing the humor and playfulness of the first three rekkids, the Truckers definitely do take themselves a little too seriously from time to time nowadays and I'd sure love it if they'd inject a little bit of that Panties in Your Purse/Steve McQueen/Too Much Sex (Too Little Jesus) spirit into their newer stuff.

The two times I saw DBT live (once on the Southern Rock Opera tour -- a show so disappointing that it convinced me not to vote for their album the year it came out {it finally wound up being my number two behind Rocket from the Tombs a year later}; once on the Decoration Day tour) they weren't loud at all -- Again, I wanted them to be Skynyrd (or at least try to be Skynyrd), and they just came out as an alt-country ballad band with way too much of the lazy drunken Replacements shtick I was sick of by 1986. I'm playing "Carl Perkins' Cadillac" right now; it's not that catchy -- a better than average Tom Petty song, at best. Jangly, I guess. I think it's pandering to the same people that the Dixie Chicks are pandering to when they drop Johnny Cash's and Merle Haggard's names in their otherwise excellent "Long Time Gone" (and all kinds of country songs in recent years pander to elsewhere): i.e., people who pat themselves on the back for knowing about music history. And its pandering is a lot less fun than the pandering on Southern Rock Opera (maybe because Lynyrd Skynyrd is more fun than Carl Perkins? could be), not to mention the pandering on on Big & Rich's album. And I can't follow the story, to be honest. And it doesn't rock. It's a stodgy old whitebread alt-country powerpop history book, and to hell with it, you know?

In other news (in re: other "Dirty South* tracks plugged above), "Daddy's Cup" sounds alright I guess - A car song with a car rhythm; kinda monotonous, but at least it's got a bit of forward motion chugging it ahead. "Danko/Manuel" is an amorphous, deadassed bore of a ballad, trudging along aimlessly and hooklessly for almost six quiet minutes. And "Where The Devil Don't Stay," as I admit above, does indeed rock.

*Southern Rock Opera* DID have both rockstuff and ballads. But at least the ballads on that album rocked. (As do "Free Bird" and "Simple Man" and "Tuesday's Gone" etc.) The problem with DBT is that they've almost entirely given up on rocking. THEY'RE the one who chose one style over the other, not me. (Their best song is still "Zip City," as far as I'm concerned, by the way.)

"Their best song is still "Zip City," as far as I'm concerned, by the way."

I'll agree with this. Ah well, can't really argue with Chuck on this until I gets me a copy of Dirty South myself.

And I really like Isbell BTW, I thought his two contributions to Decoration Day were among the best on the album, and at least when I saw it performed live, I thought "Danko/Manuel" was absolutely haunting.

I can see Chuck's point about pandering as far the Dixie Chicks are concerned b/c that song did seem specifically geared to orient themselves in the "don't make 'em like they usedta" camp, but I don't see it with "Carl Perkins' Cadillac" - I mean, that's what the song's about, y'know? It doesn't seem to me to be contrived in the least, certainly it is a "history lesson" and maybe that's a bore for some, but I don't see it as pandering at all.

Funny you mentioned "Long Time Gone" Chuck b/c I referenced that song in my Stylus review of Gretchen Wilson today, how she's big-upping Bocephus while the Chicks prefer Hank Sr.

>>I don't see it with "Carl Perkins' Cadillac" - I mean, that's what the song's about, y'know? It doesn't seem to me to be contrived in the least, certainly it is a "history lesson" and maybe that's a bore for some<<

I might not think the history lesson was such a bore if it was, say, "Michael Murphey's Cadillac, actually -- which would be way more clever, too, given Geronimo's and all. (Plus, the Kentucky Headhunters did a better song about Carl Perkins on a way better Southern Rock/country album LAST year. And it was easily one of the lesser songs on *that* album.)

yeah, the new album is pretty sparkless and a lot more jammy, which is OK but I wish they'd get out of their torpor. I liked that on Decoration Day they were obviously pissed off at the world/fucked in life; they wrote great songs from it. this time they seem to have said, "Let's get looser on this one," and they did, but they're so much better when they're both at once.

Do any of you have any idea why I can't find DBT CDs in Japan? I can find pretty much anything here, but DBT's label or seems to have no Japanese distributer or something (I really have no idea how it works).

Man I really love this album. Only a smidge less than Decoration Day, but liking this one more with every listen. Fucking Isbell, man. "Danko / Manuel" and "Goddam Lonely Love." Met him the other night (on my birthday!) and he was really nice (they all are)

I honestly can't remember the last time I was actually excited to meet a band - comes with the territory of being a rock journo I guess

Anyway, I wholeheartedly disagree with chuck upthread - and if you miss the lighthearted stuff, well, there's two songs about Walking Tall, fer chrissakes!! What do you want?? What's more lighthearted than Walking goddamm Tall? :)

I keep listening to this and I can sort of hear the criticisms about the music being a little slack but these have got to be some of the angriest songs on earth right about now. The voices just keep grabbing at me.

They were on Conan last night and they did an Isbell song I think. How old is that kid? His lyrics are just too much. So well written and so fucking defiant. He was all dressed up and looked like an American Idol contestant singing about his sort of fucked up/backwoods life and how he doesn't (or can't, I guess) give a shit. It was pretty perfect.

I wasn't planning on buying this (if Chuck's review was otm I knew how painful the experience would be), but the three mp3s on their site are terrific. Maybe the rest is too slow but those three had great hooks and the kind of guitar interplay I die for. I'll get it today and I feel like a shmuck for waiting this long.

(judging from the song samples I heard on Northern State's site he's dead on about that album though)

There's an Isbell solo album on the way. I was visiting family in North Carolina this August and had the distinct pleasure of wandering in a dive bar where Isbell was playing a solo show. He played a couple trucker songs but mostly solo stuff, and it all seemed pretty damn great, so we've got that to look forward to.

How tragically, atypically, nay, uniquely fos re DS both CE and Matos are! Chuck, who has a big, big love for Brooks and Dunn (who are to Hall and Oates as the Eagles mostly were to prime Byrds: a harmony group who can't sing), and Montgomery Gentry, who have their moments, buts, especially on new album, but are too often, as on "Hell Yeah" doing *exactly* the kind of pandering and namedropping deplored aboove, and doing it ineptly(a Skyn-de-facto-homage band with hookless, uncatchy, tuneless singles? Please! Although "You Do Your Thing" is a great Ah-know-Ah'm-gon'-dah-for-another-fucked-cause anthem/unthem, as Ronnie Van Zant and Randy Newman and the Truckers mist be coverting rat now. Toby is no doubt pissed, as always). So don't think he always gets it right, anymore than I do, or MG does, the Truckers do. All of their albums are uneven. (Haven't heard GANGSTABILLY,nor the Adam's house Cat tracks PH reportedly carries around on his hard drive, but n.d. have their poo-spots). All that I've heard are also well worth hearing.(Listen before you buy if possible, as with everything by everybody.)DIRTY SOUTH has a few problem areas (mostly PH's whinier vocals and lyrics, but also "Carl Perkins' Cadillac"), but at least 10 damn-good-to-near-greats, the latter mostly but not always courtesy of Jason; 10 out of 14, fifty-something worthy minutes out of seventy(and rocks a bit more than equally worthy DECORATION DAY). Peace all, yall.

I STILL haven't heard Dirty South (I know -- it's an f'n crime.), but I love SRO and DD equally, but for different reasons.

Southern Rock Opera rocks beautifully, which is hard to find sometimes. Some of Hood's stuff on that is incredible. The thing I like most about it, though, is that it really captures the Skynyrd soul AND mythology .. the whole "heroes that nobody gathered were heroes that die in a fiery crash ... only to be seen as heroes posthumously" narrative. The music even reflects that, and the whole thing turns weirdly meditative. Boom.

With Decoration Day, I was expecting more of said channeling, which made that record shocking when I first heard it. As Matos points out, the weariness drips all through it but so does this call for transcendence -- "Rock and well means well but it can't help telling young boys lies ... don;t call what your wearing an outfit." Isbell's songs sum up the whole record's theme, love your neighbor even if your neighbor is fucked up. It's one of the smartest rock records in ages. Hmmm, y'all.

The intelligence with DBT is scary. So point is, I bet I'll dig the new one when I catch up ...

Sorry about the typos. Yeah, I wouldn't say SRO is even "good" pandering, because unlike any pandering, it doesn't settle for button-pushing (although I could live with out the one about rock as a"factory", which is kinda true, but they don't find or seem to look for a way to to twist the cliche). They have a knack for getting me to think again about stuff I take for granted, living in the South (nad more and more I see that "South" is their lens for the cussedness of all human nature). Still wish they could be funny again, and they really need to write about the trickiness of race rlations/attitudes; has any white Southern songwriter gotten beyond platitudes and other readymade aspects?? Van Zandt did some like "The Walls of Raiford" that *implied* a plight that cut across race-lines, but his "Ballad of Curtis Loew" was disappointingly sentimental.Though, in terms of open sympathy with/praise of a black nan, he sent a message (as George Wallace liked to say), to certain other lawnhar Johnny Rebs (like David Allen Coe).

yeah DAC can be great; I've written about him at voice.com and freelancementalists.blogspot.com, but he also more than panders to racheds at times, in some club appeaances and on certain disgusting bootlegs i didn't know about when writing. Might've busted him then, but even now wonder if I'm not giving too much free advertising by even mentioning. Just another ahole problem.

Man I wanted to write this tomorrow but I'm not going to be able to sleep if I don't get this out. I've been listening to this album all day and I think that rathat than Lynyrd I think the two touchstones that people (ESPECIALLY Chuck) should be thinking of when listening to The Dirty South are John Mellencamp and Neil Young & Crazy Horse. What isn't Mellencamp (spec. "Rain On The Scarecrow")about "Putting People On The Moon" is Crazy Horse. And what isn't Crazy Horse about "Joe Perkins' Cadillac" is Mellencamp.

Caveat: Do not listen to the Buford Pusser trilogy ever again. They think the answer to Walking Tall is to try and glorify the other side of the coin, when really they should be talking about how BOTH sides are fucked up. Plus "Cottonseed" is indeed terminable and worthless. The whole thing fucks with the real point of this album, which is to express their politics the same way Decoration Day expressed their personal relationships and Southern Rock Opera expressed their sense of identity. And their politics are far too nice guy (liberals who believe in learning from your elders - it's kinda Field Of Dreams, kinda hey hey Neil Young and the Coog) for them to convincingly come off as southern mafiosos. Tracks 8-10 simply do not exist. Kogan does that shit all the time, right?

They're definitely becoming more comfortable with their verbosity, which is making their songwriting less anthemic than it was back in the day. I think they're making up for this with SOUND. Cut out the Pusser trilogy and I think this album actually has more swing than Decoration Day, but again, in a Crazy Horse kinda way. I was scared by Chuck's initial review, but Isbell's songs are much less staid here. I don't think he's the second coming and he is way too alt-country for the flashtastic, but they do shuffle now. Cooley's pretty cornpone too (while your at it never listen to "Daddy's Cup" again either, it's right after the trilogy) but when the band's behind him he's certainly got more sense than the Coog did back on "Justice & Independence '85."

Oh and it took me a while to figure out why I loved "Tornadoes" so much and the answer is that it sounds a hell of a lot like Big Star's "Kanga Roo."

If this album was just tracks 1-7 and 12-14 I think this would be my favorite DBT album. But hey, I have almost every Crazy Horse album and only a cheap Lynyrd comp.

Another thing: when trying to explain my fondness for Wilco I tell people that I think Jeff Tweedy is what Neil Young would be like if he was starting out after the concepts of culthood and punk were engrained in rock culture. If it wasn't for the sense of stardom he achieved with Springfield, Harvest, and CSNY as well as a child of the '50s sense of rock as redemption, I think Young would probably shirk into sound and abstraction more frequently. Where Wilco just implies that, Isbell's "Danko/Manuel" actually acknowledges that schism between the '60s and today nakedly. Neil can sing "Rock'n'roll is here to stay" and Isbell sings "just another thing to not believe in."

Time is passing. Their records do hold up to continued listening. I always thought the multiple singers and songwriters made many bands records more interesting.

I got one sad funny story about the last time I saw The Drive By Truckers live a few years back. I was taking the lady I was dating for a couple months to the show and she had me get a ticket for a friend of her's to go and she would pay me back later. That's cool I figured...we went to the gig had a grand time and then pretty much afterwards I got the ole' never returning your call ever again treatment. For some reason it oddly seemed appropriate, except if it was a DBT song the band in question would have been Blackfoot.

oh my god you guys -- this album is a stone fucking bore. Not a single interesting rhythm: two songwriters strumming to the same backbeat. By the time I got to "What It Means" I couldn't be bothered with listening to the hot takes on racism and America Today.

xp i will say that its def kinda monochromatic, sonically, more so than some of their other records. i just think they happened to pick a sound they do really, really well. an album like Go-Go Boots is way more adventurous musically but there are huge duds on it (fireplace poker, anybody?) same thing's true of english oceans, which starts p good and just kinda peters out, or the big to-do, which has by far one of their best songs ever ("birthday boy") and also real weak tracks like "flying wallendas" and "eyes like glue" (the v rare cooley misfire)

none of these is ever gonna be Dirty South-level again. granted, thats a p high bar.

OK, listening again, and there are some great, great songs (esp. Cooley's) and performances. But I think the problem may be as simple as sequencing. "Darkened Flags" is just not a terribly good song, and it sort of kills the momentum before it even begins, especially between "Ramon Casiano" and "Surrender Under Protest."

Wow, just heard that awesome brand new song they snuck out. Called The Perilous Night, and it is without question the most political thing they've written to date. Calls out Trump by name, and so on. Hood on point.

Incidentally heard it in tandem with a new Neil Young protest song, Already Great, which sounded pretty awesome too.

This is fucking awful. I can just sense that my opinion is in some way regressive or rockist or whatever, but so be it. I wouldn't run screaming from a room where this was being played, but who could actually get into this

truly sorry for the triple dip, but I do want to say I love the exultant defiant The High Road by Isbell, which deals just as directly with this administration. I guess it's because the message is, transcend it instead of griping about it or wallowing in it. TPN's message is more suited to an op-ed or blog post imo